Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
News Corp. Scrambles To Bid For Yahoo — The rumors keep on rolling around the surprise semi-hostile Microsoft bid for Yahoo this morning. Sillicon Alley Insider says they've heard that a couple of hedge funds were already preparing their own bids for Yahoo, and were (or perhaps still are) days away from making their move.
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Joe Nocera / New York Times:
A Giant Bid That Shows How Tired the Giant Is — Oh, how the mighty have fallen. — This may seem like an odd way to characterize a company that just announced its willingness to plunk down $44.6 billion to make its first hostile takeover ever. A company that will probably generate …
Discussion:
Strategic News Service
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Hold Everything! We May Get Another YHOO Bidder! * — A Valley source is hearing that a major private-equity firm was just days away from making its own bid for Yahoo when the Microsoft bomb hit this morning. (The same source now reports that TWO firms were circling, both big New York-based shops).
Bill Burnham / Burnham's Beat:
Microsoft/Yahoo: A Bad Deal For Silicon Valley — There's a ton of discussion today about Microsoft's unsolicited bid for Yahoo. Much of the discussion focuses on whether or not the deal is a good thing for Microsoft, Yahoo or Google's shareholders. While it's possible it could be a good or bad deal …
Jim Badenhausen / Yahoo!:
Media Response — 02-01-08 Yahoo! Board of Directors to Evaluate Unsolicited Proposal From Microsoft — Media Hotline — Robinson Lerer & Montgomery for Yahoo! Inc. — FAQ: Unsolicited Proposal From Microsoft — Q1. How is Yahoo! responding to Microsoft's proposal?
Louise Story / New York Times:
Deal That May Create More, Not Less, Competition — In most industries, a merger of two major companies would cause everyone else to panic over a decline in competition. — But in the case of the online advertising market, advertising and media executives said on Friday that they liked the prospect of a combined Microsoft and Yahoo.
Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
Microsoft-Yahoo: What Will Stay And What Will Go? — While the tech world waits to see whether Yahoo will accept Microsoft's $44.6 billion takeover bid, Microsoft and Yahoo employees sleep restlessly at the prospect of massive staff cuts if the takeover goes ahead.
Scott Gilbertson / Compiler:
Flickr Rebellion Brews at Specter of M$ Acquisition — A small but vocal minority on Flickr are already staging online protests at the prospect of a Microsoft takeover. Flickr is one of several popular Web 2.0 websites owned by Yahoo that loyal users fear will suffer under Microsoft ownership.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:Microsoft to Yahoo: Two Days to Respond or Else!
Discussion:
Guardian, Silicon Alley Insider, PDA, Webomatica, Valleywag, Search Engine Land, BuzzMachine, WebProNews, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Brandon LeBlanc, Glass House, eWeek, Mashable!, Virtual Economics, LiewCF, Web X.0, CNET News.com, The Brian Alvey Weblog, Microsoft Watch and CNNMoney.com
Paula Rooney / Open Source:Yahoo! buy would give Microsoft ownership of open source e-mail, projects, code.
Discussion:
TeleRead
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com:Google's Investment in AOL Set Stage for MSFT/Yahoo! Merger/Acquisition
Discussion:
Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog
Jeff Atwood / Coding Horror:
Every User Lies — Heidi Adkisson notes that features sell products, but the people buying those products often don't use the very features they bought the product for in the first place. … It's interesting that Heidi used the hedge phrase “may be different” when her own study data showed …
Dan Mitchell / New York Times:
Bullish About the Web — ONLINE ADS: WINNERS AND LOSERS — Perhaps because a Jan. 2 report (pdf) by JPMorgan Chase on Internet stocks ran 312 pages, it took a while for many bloggers to digest it. “Nothing but Net,” written by Imran Khan, a stock analyst, and his team at the investment bank …
Alexander Rose / Long Views:
Decision: Blogs vs. New York Times — February 1st, 02008 by Alexander Rose — Long Bets has arrived at a decision for Long Bet #2 between blogger Dave Winer and Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times. At stake is US$2000.00 plus half the interest that has accrued over the last 5 years in the Farsight Fund …
BBC:
In pictures: Mobile design competition — Royal College of Art students were set the challenge of designing a mobile phone to “outperform, outsmart, and outmanoeuvre everything on the market”. — One of three winners in the competition, sponsored by 3, was Vase.
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
iPhone takes on semi, lives to tell the tale — We though we'd seen it all when it came to creative device destruction — iPod with a bullet: check, exploding laptops: check, everything in a blender: double check — but we've never seen anything spend over an hour on the highway and survive.
Discussion:
Tech Blog
Brad Fitzpatrick / Google Code Blog:
URLs are People, Too — So you've just built a totally sweet new social app and you can't wait for people to start using it, but there's a problem: when people join they don't have any friends on your site. They're lonely, and the experience isn't good because they can't use the app with people they know.
Discussion:
Google Operating System, O'Reilly Radar, this is sippey.typepad.com, Andy Beard, Valleywag, The Social Times, Googlified, ZDNet, bytes|genes, WebProNews, Wikinomics, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, VentureBeat, GigaOM, techno.blog, Scobleizer, Mac Beach, chrisbrogan.com, Search Engine Land, Google Blogoscoped, Mashable! and ReadWriteWeb
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:Google Gathers Social Graph Information From The Web, Launches API
Discussion:
The Next Web, Profy.Com, eWeek, ReadWriteWeb, Plaxo's Personal Card, PDA, Mashable!, techno.blog, Raw and Between the Lines
Arn / MacRumors:
MacBook Air 1.6Ghz HDD vs 1.8Ghz SSD Benchmarks — Many readers are reporting shipments and delivery in our MacBook Air forum. First impressions and notes of the MacBook Air are being compiled in this thread. — Few head to head comparisons between the Solid State Drive (SSD) …
